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Hi John–this is Elizabeth Stein, the NhRP’s Litigation Director.
On January 21st, we shared the news that Colorado’s highest court issued an opinion in our case on behalf of five elephants held captive in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo–stating that unless an individual is human, they have no right to liberty, “no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be.”
On Tuesday we filed a petition for rehearing in this case, urging the Court to reconsider its opinion. Let me explain why.
First, what the Colorado Supreme Court has done here is unprecedented–and not in a good way.
In 2023, the NhRP filed a habeas corpus petition under Colorado common law on behalf of elephants Jambo, Kimba, LouLou, Lucky, and Missy and sought the recognition of their right to liberty and release to an elephant sanctuary. The writ of habeas corpus, known as “the Great Writ,” is a centuries-old means of challenging unjust confinement. It’s a critical judicial safeguard of civil liberties that has historically been used in novel cases, such as ours, where the confined individual had no right to liberty.
In rendering its decision, the Colorado Supreme Court should have correctly concluded that the question of whether the elephants have the right to liberty is a matter for the judiciary, to be determined based on science and common law principles of justice, such as liberty and equality. But that’s not what the Court did–and this is a real problem.
Essentially, the Colorado Supreme Court passed the buck to the legislature on the matter of our clients’ legal personhood, wrongly stating the legislature had already precluded nonhuman animals from being recognized as legal persons with rights. By doing so, the Court ruled that the Great Writ, as it existed and was cherished for centuries, no longer exists in Colorado. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Court also ignored its own prior decisions in concluding that habeas corpus was unavailable because the NhRP was seeking the elephants’ release to a sanctuary and not their total freedom (which is no longer possible given their decades in captivity).
In short, the Colorado Supreme Court chose to turn habeas corpus on its head–including for humans who seek relief from unlawful confinement–rather than allow any further judicial consideration of the elephants’ suffering, their autonomy, and their right to liberty. It also turned a blind eye to its judicial obligations to steward the common law.
